


already know you're fucked up (and it's cool with me)

by SbiderSlut (BlackCoffeeCat)



Series: Sbider's Tony Stark Bingo 2019 [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Developing Relationship, Eating Disorders, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Food Issues, Heart-to-Heart, Love Confessions, M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-10-31 02:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17840852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackCoffeeCat/pseuds/SbiderSlut
Summary: Love and care are often shown through food. But sometimes, food is too much.Tony seems determined to love Peter, regardless.---In which Peter struggles with an eating disorder he can't overcome, and Tony is steadfast.---Fill for Tony Stark Bingo 2019 (S1 - Doing Groceries)





	already know you're fucked up (and it's cool with me)

**Author's Note:**

> For someone who likes visiting the grocery story/supermarket, I went rather dark for this piece. Uh, I'm simultaneously playing Tony Stark Bingo and playing Mental Health Bingo, apparently, so *Will Smith arms* behold. 
> 
> Just as a warning, this depicts restrictive eating disorders, and the ending isn't 'boom, Peter gets better.' It's more along the lines of 'Peter's still not okay, but he'll keep trying.' Which is how life is, sometimes. Please read carefully and skip this if you want to; the last thing I want is to trigger anyone <3 <3
> 
> (Title is pulled from _Don't Ask, Don't Tell_ , by the magical Tove Lo.)

If this entire issue weren't such a sensitive subject that he pays far too much attention to, Peter would never have noticed. It’d be just another mentor-ly, looking-after-you type of thing the older man does. Harmless and heart-warming.

But Peter does notice, from the first time the man shows up at Peter’s apartment with a shopping bag full of take-out and pantry staples. He feels it, deep in his empty gut, and there’s dread and resentment, but also a warmth that comes because it’s _Tony_.

Anyone else would have raised his hackles, but not Tony.

Never Tony. 

“Uh, hi?” Peter lets the man through -- because in no universe would Peter Parker not immediately let Tony Stark in -- but he remains guarded all the same, especially when the man starts to naturally unpack his bounty into the appropriate shelves of Peter’s meager kitchen and fridge. “What are you doing in Cambridge, sir?”

“What, a man can’t visit his favorite young buck in his college apartment?” Tony asks, not even pausing from where he’s stacking a box of instant quinoa above Peter’s fridge. “I gotta say, it looks like you’ve got this broke-college-student thing down to a tee. You doing alright?”

The thing is, Peter _knows_ what’s happening. He knows, when he sees all the food. And his stomach growls, angry and loud, because his mind is at constant war with his body these days, and his stomach is feeling particularly resentful at its mistreatment.

It howls, bewildered and indignant and woeful at its undeserved abuse, and Peter knows Tony hears that cry, too.

“Did MJ call you?” Peter asks, resignedly. “She told you?”

He’s not sure whether relief or disappointment washes over him when Tony plays clueless. “Told me what? Maybe I just want to have dinner with you and catch up.”

“Okay, let’s. It _is_ good to see you.”

And if food happens to go down easier when accompanied by Tony Stark’s particular brand of hyperactive chatter?

Happy coincidence, Peter tells himself.

\---

It happens more times, to Peter’s utter horror, yet deep pleasure. He’ll never not want to spend time with Tony Stark, and it hasn’t escaped him that the man looks at him _differently_ now.

Okay, so the _differently_ has been tinged with a little more concern, ever since Peter’s collarbones have started becoming a little _too_ prominent. Ever since the bones on his wrists have started becoming particularly jutting.

But, he’ll take what he can get; sure, he restricts himself where food is concerned, but he’s a hopeless pig when it comes to Tony Stark -- he’ll greedily gobble up every morsel of attention and every minute of time he gets from the billionaire.

He can’t have food, but he’ll gorge on this concession.

Tony always levels him with a penetrating stare before he leaves, and asks, “You’ll be alright?”

And Peter always promises, “Yes,” and sure, he tosses and turns all night and grits his teeth, but he holds out.

He’s so past crying; he’s cried a thousand times and finally learned: tears do _nothing_ to shed the weight, to stop the sharp, cutting hunger. What’s the point?

But, he always sticks to his word.

Not once, after Tony’s visits, does Peter lock himself in his bathroom and clean out his stomach with fingers hastily shoved to the back of his throat. He itches, desperate, to do it, but he doesn’t.

Because he’d promised.

He’s may be all kinds of fucked up, but Peter Parker doesn’t break promises, least of all to Tony Stark.

\---

He has a bad day; totally expected.

To be honest, he’s surprised it took that long.

Tony comes, and Peter lets him in, but he takes one glance at the bags of groceries and feels his gut churn, despite it being wretchedly empty. “Fuck,” he says, lump already growing in his throat. He hates, _hates_ that Tony ever has to see him on such a day. “I’m sorry.”

“What’s going on?” Tony asks. “You alright?”

“No.”

A pause, and then Tony says, voice somber but accepting, “Are you having a bad day? Bad food day?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. No need to apologize.”

“I just… can’t.” _Can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t stop the bad thoughts, can’t deal. Can’t stop liking how the hunger hurts. Can’t stop feeling the most productive and successful when starving and running on too many cups of coffee._

Another pause. Tony blinks, and nods. “Okay, I hear you. I’ll put the food away, and let’s watch some TV. Do you feel okay drinking tea? Electrolyte water?”

Peter would say that Tony’s easy acceptance throws his world off-balance, but it’s actually the opposite; instead, it feels like he’d actually been off-kilter this entire time, and Tony’s willing adaptation has given him a good, hard kick and thrown him back in proper place. “You’re okay with that?” Peter asks, disbelieving. _You’re not going to force me? Tell me all one-hundred-and-seventy-three ways that I’m fucked up and demand that I fix myself? Tell me how my suffering is hurting you?_

Even as he works the electric kettle, Tony’s shoulders rise and fall in a soft sigh. “I don’t like that you’re starving yourself,” he says, “But I’m not stupid. I know it’s gonna take more than me coming in here with food and snapping my fingers -- I have an ego, but I’m not _that_ self-important. If you have a bad day, you have a bad day. Besides, I’m here because I want to support you -- whenever, wherever -- _not_ because I want to hang out with you _only_ when you’re having a good day.”

Peter’d run dry on tears so long ago, but that doesn’t stop the lump in his throat or the stinging in his eyes at Tony’s words. “Oh,” he whisper-speaks, voice hoarse and shaky. “Okay.”

At Tony’s prompting, Peter takes a seat on the couch and cues up an episode of _Friends_ , though he keeps the volume low so he can hear the faint rustling and clanging as the older man fixes them cups of tea. The sounds are comforting. They fill up the space between his walls.

“Ginger and chamomile,” Tony says, handing Peter the larger mug. He settles down on the couch with his own mug of black tea. “Soothes the stomach -- I’m sure it’s not feeling so great right now.”

“I --” Peter loses his breath at the deep thought which went into that one gesture. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Are you cold?”

When is he not cold? Tonight, it feels as if he’s freezing from his bone marrow. The chill penetrates deep, burrowing low in his chest and staking its claim there, and Peter feels vibrations and shudders deep in his chest as if each individual organ is shivering. 

He couldn’t be colder if he froze to death.

Peter nods, and wordlessly buries himself in the refuge of Tony’s arms when the man opens them in offering. It’s warm, and faintly scented of cologne and soap, and so, so like a home whose feeling Peter forgets too easily.

Peter takes a shaky breath as shame washes through his lanky frame. He knows that while he doesn’t feel frigid and untouchable for the first time in months, he’ll still feel that way to Tony. He’ll feel like an ice chip -- flimsy and fragile, slippery and liable to break or melt away at any point. Peter can tell, by the careful, tender way Tony cradles him, like he’s precious cargo that could crumble into dust particles at any second.

“Christ, your hands are like ice.” Gently, one of Peter's hands is picked up and blown on. Warmth ghosts over Peter's skin as Tony exhales, low and in a steady, long puff. In silent awe, Peter watches. Tony carefully rubs the warmth in. He pointedly takes Peter’s hand, sets it flat, palm down against the steady, firm heat of his own chest, and presses. “You can warm them on me.”

Against Tony’s chest, Peter’s fingers tremble and flex. “Why do you like me?” The question slips out without thought, and Peter can’t find it in himself to care tonight. Some days, he gets dangerously close to losing that light at the end of the tunnel. Tonight is one of those nights, and he can’t care about consequences if he can't see them looming in the pitch darkness.

It’s dangerous, Peter knows. But he weathers it, always -- he forces himself through until he catches sight of the light again. He hasn’t given in, yet.

But Peter can’t quite manage to keep his secrets close when he’s caught in Thanatos’ grip. They slip out, water through finger cracks.

At the moment, Peter has nothing to lose, so he addresses the elephant in the room because he doesn’t fear it, for once.  

“Why do I like you?” Tony echoes, voice deceptively soft, like he’s soothing an injured animal. “You’re you. There’s no other explanation.”

“I’m fucked up.”

Arms tighten around him, Tony's lifeforce desperately trying to shield Peter's wasting body. “Still you.”

“I don’t know when I’ll get better. If.”

Peter knows what he’s doing. It’s a bullet list of reasons -- reasons why he doesn’t deserve anything good. Reasons why it’s okay that he inflict this type of self-abuse and allow this vice of _no_ vices to continue on. Reasons why Tony Stark should run away from the imploding Peter Parker before Peter becomes too big of a black hole and sucks the other man in, too.

“My loving you isn’t conditional on you being well, Peter.”

_My loving you._

Peter’s heart flutters dangerously, and his voice crackles as he says, “It should be.” _You shouldn’t love me. My hundred pounds of baggage and I don’t deserve it._

“It’s not, though.”

Crying hurts, now. Not just emotionally. The way the sobs hitch makes his ribs ache, and his heartbeat is already weak as it is, without the way his chest is wrenched around. His heart may stop, or his chest will burst open and all his bones will snap with a macabre symphony of brittle noises like bird’s bones or uncooked pasta.

Peter hates it.

The tears burn down his face as they soak into Tony’s shirt, and Peter clings to the grounding sense of a chin resting against the top of his head, and the steady beating of a heart against his right cheek. “I’m scared of who I’d be without this,” he whispers, so quiet. Is he saying it for himself or for Tony? He's not sure. “If I’m not broken, then what do I have left?”

“Me. May. Ned and MJ. Your brilliance and your future, Peter.”

“Do you think I have one?”

It’s the smallest twitch, but Peter doesn’t miss the second that Tony falters. The tiniest severance of his breath, the skip of a heart against Peter’s teary cheek. The flex of the jaw that rests against his head, and the second of trembling which takes over the older man’s hands. Peter closes his eyes, and breathes in the stench of fear which takes over the room -- Tony's fear.

But it passes. Tony takes a deep, clearing breath which whistles against Peter’s hair, and his heartbeat steadies out. A hand, no longer trembling, comes to curl around the base of Peter’s neck. “Yes,” Tony rasps. It comes out low and guttural, spoken from his soul. “You do. You have one.”

“...Okay.”

“Okay.”

For the next few quiet minutes, Peter finds himself waiting for the other shoe. The proper _talk_ that he dreads. The _questions_ , followed by judgment and accusations. It's not that Tony will be cruel -- it's that Tony is human, Peter is atrocious, and Peter _deserves_ all of that. 

Peter can’t properly bask in the comfort, knowing what’s coming.

Yet, Tony remains silent.

Finally, Peter cracks. “You’re not going to make me tell you why?” It’s what he’s most afraid of. Tony will test him, ask him why he’s so fucked up, and when Peter doesn’t have a good enough answer, Tony will finally realize that it’s time to cut his losses. Peter is a curse, a scourge, and this is the moment Tony will realize.

This is the moment Tony will let him go. And surely, Peter could drown. Without something to tether him, he'll be whisked away in a rip current.

Maybe it’s for the better, anyway.

Tony doesn’t let him go, though. He asks, “Do you know why?”

Even though they both know the answer.  

There’s a whoosh in Peter’s chest. The roar in his ears is deafening, like being swallowed by the ocean and hearing water rushing past. _Tony gets it. He fucking gets it. He understands._ “I -- no. Kind of, but also not? It makes no sense -- none of this makes any sense.”

A whisper of a hand runs through his hair and Peter knows it’s gentle for the sake of how sensitive the barest touch feels to him, but also because his hair is so, so damaged and liable to fall out at the lightest of pulls. “It doesn’t have to make sense,” Tony assures, voice low. “These things don’t have clean-cut reasons. There’s not always sense to them. And you don’t have to tell me why -- you don’t have to tell me anything you’re not comfortable telling me, okay?”

“I - I think I love you, too,” Peter blurts, before he can overthink it. He’s not comfortable with most things, nowadays, but he _wants_ to confess this one thing that he actually knows and understands.

Peter doesn’t know why he’s so fixated on controlling his body with a savage cruelty that's otherwise uncharacteristic for him. He can’t explain how he’s so endlessly kind and tolerant to the cruel world, but can’t keep a morsel of it for himself.

But this feeling, Peter knows.

With how his life is, he can’t afford not to say it. Tony needs to know.

Just in case.

Tony needs to know that Peter feels something _good_ when he thinks of the older man. Tony needs to know that Peter is drowning, but the sensation when he thinks of Tony feels like a breath of desperately drawn air.

“I’m not sure,” Peter clarifies. “because I’m so _stuck._ I’m not sure if this is what love feels like. I don’t know what healthy love feels like. But I think I do -- love you, that is -- because it doesn’t feel dark. It doesn’t feel like my, uh.” _Eating disorder_. “Food _thing_. I don’t love you like I love starving -- it feels better than that. It feels _good_.”

_It doesn’t hurt me._

“Peter…”

“And I’m a mess so I know this is the worst thing for you, but I wanted you to know, because.”

“Peter.”

The lowness of Tony’s tone forces Peter to attention. It cuts through the fog of his dreary thoughts. “Y-yeah?”

“Look at me?”

Reluctantly, Peter pulls away from the man’s arms, just enough that he can look into dark eyes which are so earnest that he’s saturated by secondhand vulnerability. Not often does the older man, long jaded by how harsh life has been, show this type of ardency -- even to those he holds most dear. Peter says, heart thrumming in his chest like the wings of a little, floundering hummingbird, “Yeah?” It comes out breathy and fearful.

“You’re not okay. I’m not okay. Most people aren’t okay. You don’t owe it to the world -- or to me -- to have your shit together, alright? I’m going to love you, regardless. And I’m going to try to help you, regardless.”

Peter blinks. It’s too much to take in. His first instinct is disbelief. But, this is _Tony_. His blind trust in Tony knows no bounds. It’s already as infinite as the universe is, and Tony comes in with his statements and vows that Peter can’t help but believe in, and the universe just gets impossibly wider, still.

Also. His eyes land on the darkness of the man’s eyelashes, the crinkle of his eyes, the slope of his handsome nose. They drop, to the fullness of lips and the way an immaculate beard frames them. God, he’s so beautiful.

It’s skewed of Peter to notice these things above others, but aesthetics and beauty plague him, now. He can’t help but notice lovely things, and Tony is the loveliest of them.

Peter’s favorite -- the one lovely thing he feels like he can still touch. 

His oogling doesn’t go unnoticed, and Tony’s eyes soften with a fond warmth. “Would you like a kiss?” he asks, a faint smile tugging at his lips.

 _Yes_ , Peter thinks, but he falters. “I -- uh. Yes, but no. My breath -- it’s uh. I’m in ketosis.”

“I won’t mind,” Tony says. “If you want.”

“Uh, can I raincheck?” Peter asks, feeling inordinately foolish, but he wants his first kiss to be _nice_. He wants to not feel half-dead for it. He wants to feel his heart skip and flutter, but in a way that’s not tinged with danger. “I feel gross today, and I want our first kiss to be… _not_ gross.”

“Of course,” Tony says. “Definitely. Is there anything you’d like right now?”

“...Yes.”

Tony ends up painting a mosaic of butterfly kisses down the side of Peter’s cheek and neck, instead. If Peter concentrates, he can practically _sense_ the adoration and worship being pushed into the cells of his skin by deliverance of Tony’s lips. “We can wait. However long you want. We'll get you through this, alright?”

Peter laughs, once. It’s barely anything at all -- more of a puff of breath that’s simply _not sad_ rather than actually _happy_ \-- but it’s _something_. If he can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel tonight, well. He has Tony. He has a kiss waiting for him. Today, that’s enough. It'll do.

A deep breath. A pause. “Alright.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, that's that. It's not as explicit as I had originally intended, but the ED-ness is definitely there. As always -- and especially with this type of sensitive issue -- if anyone wants to talk, you can find me on Tumblr as [SbiderSlut](http://sbiderslut.tumblr.com/). My inbox is open. Thank you for reading, and comments are very much appreciated <3


End file.
